Proxying API Requests in Development

People often serve the front-end React app from the same host and port as their backend implementation. For example, a production setup might look like this after the app is deployed:

/             - static server returns index.html with React app
/todos        - static server returns index.html with React app
/api/todos    - server handles any /api/* requests using the backend implementation

Such setup is not required. However, if you do have a setup like this, it is convenient to write requests like fetch('/api/todos') without worrying about redirecting them to another host or port during development.

To tell the development server to proxy any unknown requests to your API server in development, add a proxy field to your package.json, for example:

"proxy": "http://localhost:4000",

This way, when you fetch('/api/todos') in development, the development server will recognize that it’s not a static asset, and will proxy your request to http://localhost:4000/api/todos as a fallback. The development server will only attempt to send requests without text/html in its Accept header to the proxy.

Conveniently, this avoids CORS issues and error messages like this in development:

Fetch API cannot load http://localhost:4000/api/todos. No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. Origin 'http://localhost:3000' is therefore not allowed access. If an opaque response serves your needs, set the request's mode to 'no-cors' to fetch the resource with CORS disabled.

Keep in mind that proxy only has effect in development (with npm start), and it is up to you to ensure that URLs like /api/todos point to the right thing in production. You don’t have to use the /api prefix. Any unrecognized request without a text/html accept header will be redirected to the specified proxy.

Configuring the Proxy Manually

If the proxy option is not flexible enough for you, you can specify an object in the following form (in package.json). You may also specify any configuration value http-proxy-middleware or http-proxy supports.

{
  // ...
  "proxy": {
    "/api": {
      "target": "<url>",
      "ws": true
      // ...
    }
  }
  // ...
}

All requests matching this path will be proxies, no exceptions. This includes requests for text/html, which the standard proxy option does not proxy.

If you need to specify multiple proxies, you may do so by specifying additional entries. Matches are regular expressions, so that you can use a regexp to match multiple paths.

{
  // ...
  "proxy": {
    // Matches any request starting with /api
    "/api": {
      "target": "<url_1>",
      "ws": true
      // ...
    },
    // Matches any request starting with /foo
    "/foo": {
      "target": "<url_2>",
      "ssl": true,
      "pathRewrite": {
        "^/foo": "/foo/beta"
      }
      // ...
    },
    // Matches /bar/abc.html but not /bar/sub/def.html
    "/bar/[^/]*[.]html": {
      "target": "<url_3>",
      // ...
    },
    // Matches /baz/abc.html and /baz/sub/def.html
    "/baz/.*/.*[.]html": {
      "target": "<url_4>"
      // ...
    }
  }
  // ...
}

Configuring a WebSocket Proxy

When setting up a WebSocket proxy, there are a some extra considerations to be aware of.

If you’re using a WebSocket engine like Socket.io, you must have a Socket.io server running that you can use as the proxy target. Socket.io will not work with a standard WebSocket server. Specifically, don’t expect Socket.io to work with the websocket.org echo test.

There’s some good documentation available for setting up a Socket.io server.

Standard WebSockets will work with a standard WebSocket server as well as the websocket.org echo test. You can use libraries like ws for the server, with native WebSockets in the browser.

Either way, you can proxy WebSocket requests manually in package.json:

{
  // ...
  "proxy": {
    "/socket": {
      // Your compatible WebSocket server
      "target": "ws://<socket_url>",
      // Tell http-proxy-middleware that this is a WebSocket proxy.
      // Also allows you to proxy WebSocket requests without an additional HTTP request
      // https://github.com/chimurai/http-proxy-middleware#external-websocket-upgrade
      "ws": true
      // ...
    }
  }
  // ...
}